I remember rolling my shopping cart through the grocery store with my son in tow. I was throwing in paper doilies from the bakery department. I had already thrown in a dozen glue sticks. 10 tubes of glitter. And 36 shot glasses.
No, I don’t have a drinking problem. That I know of. But they were on sale for 50 cents and I needed 36 because I had 36 5th graders that year and they were all going to come together (in my imagination) as these very sweet Mother’s Day gifts (the glasses were for mom to put rings and earrings, etc.), and we were going to write beautiful Mom’s Day poems, and I was really, really excited that the shot glasses were on sale, because the whole 36 Mother’s Day presents would only set me personally back about $40 bucks which was a whole lot less than the Mother’s Day presents we made last year.
(Watch Lily on ABC News with Diane Sawyer)
Now, the science projects were always a little more expensive. And I wanted my kids to have the poster board for the displays, but I figured they could still have plenty of writing space if we cut the poster board in half, and that would save me half the cost.
The classroom set of Old Yeller paperbacks was my most ambitious project. I rummaged though every thrift shop and yard sale, and actually came up with 18 copies, most around a quarter and most with almost every page still attached.
